Prof. Avishai Margalit is professor emeritus in philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Between 2011 and 2016 he was the George F. Kennan Professor in the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. 

His articles in philosophy cover a wide range of topics, from the philosophy of language and logic to the philosophy of religion, society, politics, and ethics. His books include The Decent Society, The Ethics of Memory, On Betrayal, and Idolatry (with Moshe Halbertal), all published by the Harvard University Press. His book On Compromise and Rotten Compromises was published by the Princeton University Press, and his book Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (with Ian Buruma) was published by Penguin. 

Prof. Margalit is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books on culture and politics. The anthology of his articles there, Views in Review: Politics and Culture in the State of the Jews, was published by Farrar Straus and Giroux. 

His current interest is manipulation, primarily in the politico-social sphere. 

Among the awards he has received are the Israel Prize and the EMET Prize in philosophy.